Wednesday, June 07, 2017

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid
and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue
not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take
off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of
men — go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young,
and with the mothers of families —
re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be
a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but
in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your
eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.”

Saturday, June 03, 2017

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.”

Friday, June 02, 2017

Re: this earlier comment of yours, I'm very interested to know your thoughts: "I have a fundamental philosophical disagreement with Kenoli's approach to process. ... at a fundamental level, I don't think Kenoli and I have compatible philosophies about large scale process."

First, knitted into these comments I made about Kenoli's philosophy re: process, I came right out and wrote that I had already tried to write about it to you but it did not feel right to write about it. So I feel a little dissed that you ask me to write about it, ignoring my explicit declaration that it didn't feel right to write about it. Um, why don't you pick up the phone and ask me?! Secondly, I am sick of writing to you with no face-to-face. And third, I don't want to cope with face-to-face time with you even if you should magically find time for me, not if you think it is acceptable to call me adorable or tell me I am a gem and now I see that you can't send me poetry either. You can't do anything right in your interactions with me so it might be best to terminate all interactions. And, fourth, do you know how many questions I have asked you in various emails that you have not acknowledged or answered? And yet you write and ask me to do for you what you do not do for me, which is to answer your question, to give you my time and attention. I'm tired of this dynamic. I'm a bit creeped out that you never, like, want to TALK to me.

Here's another poem I thought of while musing on what a gem you are.

Call me a gem, call me adorable: it's all the same, isn't it? I told you I could not maintain our friendship if you persist in this behavior. I am very angry about what you wrote a few days ago, telling me it is up to me to deal with feeling diminished. First, of course I know that I am responsible for my reactions. Second, I thought I was asking you for help maintaining our friendship while I struggle. Also, I was very hurt by comments you made about my pain because I interpreted some of your comments to suggest that I was trying to avoid pain as if I were, well, not as 'evolved as you. I don't believe you know more about love than I do: far from it. I believe you are delusional. Well, I have lots to say but now I am filling up with anger and pain and I really don't want to spread my anger and pain in your direction. I have been in quite a lot of pain where you are concerned. I am tired of being in so much pain. I am feeling like a masochist, subjecting myself to this pain. I was, and remain, so hurt that you seemed to imply that I was trying to avoid pain in some kind of copout. I think I confront my pain as well as any human being could. And another thing. . . . well, I just don't want to say more and hurt myself, or, perhaps, you. I have tried to tell you a few things that I, like, really, REALLY want to tell you but I veer into anger. I'll try again sometime and send you my thoughts when I can write them out without gasping with pain (this is a good way to know if I have been unkind: if it hurts me to write it, I have probably said something I should not have said).

AND ALSO (I am a fury) reread what you wrote about why it 'irritates' when people call you adorable: you suggested that it diminishes you because, inter alia, the person declaring you to be adorable might be managing a power dynamic and they are calling you adorable to relegate you to a different power dynamic. I pick up on YOUR words and say, yes, this is what it feels like for me and then you brush me off, seize upon my choice of YOUR LANGUAGE and tell me I am responsibility for feeling diminished. I am still in a fury over your inconsistency and lack of fairness and your dismissiveness

This poem once thrilled me, especially during my high happy epoch, and I still recall it on occasion — like now.

I don't want you to share poetry with me anymore.

I don't want the kind of special friendship you offer me, marc. One of the central themes that I relied on as I raised Katie was that each of us gets to want what we want. We don't always get what we want, of course, but it is very important, I always taught katie (and I believe this) to let ourselves want what we want. I resent very much some things you have written about how you don't understand why Kenoli wants the kind of love he says he wants or that I want the kind of love I want. . . I really resent it that you have said I am conventional. Marc, your behavior at conferences is very conventional: get back in touch with me after you have treated men the way you treated me in May and the way you treated Marcela in August and then you might be able to convince me that you are doing something evolutional, beyond ordinary conventions of love. What I think you are doing is a classic ploy of the unhappily married man: you are looking outside your marriage for what you aren't getting at home and you are selfishly, albiet unconsciously, using women. I don't know if you had sex with Marcela although, of course, I assume you did not. No, you aren't looking for sex that you aren't getting at home: you are looking for soft, feminine women with whom you can be soft and get validated in ways I assume Karen does not validate you. it is okay for you to want what you want but I believe there are some aspects of denial in the story you tell yourself about what you are doing with women. Also, I wonder if you choose fat women to play your evolutionary love games because you do not see them as sexual objects and perhaps you think we have less feelings than more attractive women? There were times at Marconi when you draped yourself around Marcela: I was not the only person who noticed, of course. If you are being all 'new thought' about love when you act like that, why aren't you doing that to men? No, I am convinced you are working out some issues, just like all of us are working out some issues. . . . and you have every right to behave any way you choose. . . but I choke a bit on your claim that you are doing something new and fine related to love. . . how I chafe that you said i was being conventional. Yes, I want something conventional: I want someone to love and adore me in a committed relationship. It really hurt me that you wrote that about me being conventional: you aren't an idiot plus I have told you so much about my life. I am lonely and vulnerable and I want to change that. The same with Kenoli. It is so unfair for you to pontificate about loftier forms of friendship when you have so much in your life that I do not have: you have a mate, you have a home, you have a farm, you have work, you have relationships with your family, you are supported financially by a mate, you have people to share your life with. You have all the things conventional people want and it feels like a little slap for you to suggest that there is something wrong with me wanting these things because they are conventional. Yes, I've had a fine time writing to you but I don't want to keep it up: it is getting flatter by the day. The funny thing is that it wouldn't have taken much to keep me excited about writing to you: it's not like I am going to actually enter into a romantic relationship with you or any other male on the planet. It's not like I've asked you to give me much. But you have told me just one time too many that you'd LIKED to write to me but you don't have the time: give that line a rest, Marc. You have time to do everything you want to do. If you actually answered some of the questions I have asked you from time to time. . . well, I think I might have been able to shift the feelings that I have had. If you had treated me like a real friend instead of this special category you seem to have put me in. . . . I don't know. I just know I am hurting a lot and I am tired of hurting.

I know my request last week for you to stop telling me I am adorable was unreasonable. I have too many rules for what you can do that is acceptable.

And why the fuck am I wasting my time telling you this? What I think shouldn't matter to you at all because all that matters to you is what goes on inside you. After reading the things you wrote to me last week when you dissed me for asking you to not say I am adorable (calling me a gem is the same damned thing), the way you told me, basically, that I am on my own and you will not calibrate your behavior to help me. . . . well, I found myself thinking maybe I had it right when I tried to stay isolated from people. . . . I mean, after all, if all that matters is what goes on inside me, what are people for anyway? There is really no need to talk to others.

Love rays eternelle,

oh, yeah, right back at you. I'm not proposing that we aren't friends or that I won't love you a whole lot forever because I will. I'm just saying I've had enough.

You can write me tomes if you like and not get enough attention from me.

MT (=Mr. Tall)

I have a new label for you: the love ranger (as in the lone ranger). There is an element of danger to your love experiments, the way you go around unleashing the love in women that you pick out of the crowd. How do you know these women need what you have to offer? Why is it that you don't give it to men?

Well, you catch my drift.

I have been very sad for the last few days, grieving the loss of you. But for now, I can't maintain this friendship. If I had any doubts, they were dispelled when you wrote to me today and told me I was a gem. That demonstrated to me that you are going to go on being you: and of course you must go on being you. Well, I have to be me: I'm tired, I'm vulnerable, I'm lonely, i'm in pain and the energy that gets moving inside me related to you is just not working for me.

You know I am inexperienced in friendships with males.

Oh, here is something I have to address before we end our contact: you are a fool to be staying in your relationship with karen, esp. in the way you wrote about it, saying you are going to find love within the choices you have already made. I know anything I could say would just sound biased to you but I really think that as your friend I simply wince when I feel how this dogged choice really affects you. It is playing with fire to do what you are doing. Each day you are making choices that will affect future choices and making choices that limit you from your destiny. True, none of us can escape our destiny . . . . but we can, I believe, avoid a lot of tangles and brambles. I know it must sound biased but as your friend. I am aghast (and so, I think, is Kenoli) that you doggedly stay with Karen. I don't say this with an attendant fantasy that you would be available to me if you did: I am certain I don't have this fantasy. Sometimes I think you stay with her because you don't want to give up free rent, or give up the mission or the farm.

I may as well tell you what Mark Jones told me in our seven hour talk. I started to talk to you about this at Marconi. I said "Mark Jones said you have been encouraging me to love" and then you went off with Marcela. Geez, some folks might posit that you dashed off with Marcela to avoid the conversation: that is what it felt like to me. But then Mark told me that he has had platonic friendships w/women and sometimes inadvertently sent them

The Right Thing

Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will—
The right thing happens to the happy man.

The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.

God bless the roots!—Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,

And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would, surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man.

On 10/22/06 11:34 PM, "Tree Fitzpatrick" wrote:

I went to one of their conventions when I was doing corporate OD work. It was so,well, . . not me.

But,having said that, I think you and Kenoli should pitch a workshop to ODNetwork for next year's convention. I know a lot about how they pick presenters from working with Kathie. They are always looking to present different stuff. And it fits with my belief that you and Kenoli should look for the intersection between corporations and communities: to help organizations interface with all stakeholders, not just shareholders. A natural market for you.

Also, the time to write a business plan is long before you write a fundraising plan. I bet the OD work you and Kenoli are doing amounts to what I consider a biz plan. I'm not talking about a biz plan to be used for financing but one to set intention.

Also, I don't think I am ever going to have advice for your business. I'd like to have something to offer you guys because I want to spend time with you but I think all I have to offer is loving friendship. I have all kinds of ideas, some of them must be good, but I suspect you guys are doing just fine. You just need to hold steady and what you want will come to you. If I could have been of any use, it would have been in the OD work itself, mission/vision, clear intention, that kind of thing and you did not seem interested in including me in any of that work, which is just fine, it is your work, not mine.

Also, I have a fundamental philosophical disagreement with Kenoli's approach to process. I could talk to you about this sometime if you are interested. I've tried to write and tell you but it doesn't feel right to write it. It is a visceral thing but something I feel very deeply: at a fundamental level, I don't think Kenoli and I have compatible philosophies about large scale process.

--
Love rays,
Tree Fitzpatrick

http://thecultureoflove.blogspot.com/

. . . the great and incalculable grace of love, which says, with Augustine, "I want you to be," without being able to give any particular reason for such supreme and unsurpassable affirmation. -- Hannah Arendt